


quick with thorn (i found it sweet and fair)

by TheJGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/M, Fae & Fairies, tristan and iseult au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8062204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: One stormy night, a dark warrior from the faerie world comes to collect a debt, and leaves with the princess of Hosnian.(A Tristan and Iseult adaptation.)





	1. Prologue: Heretofore/A Year and a Day

**Author's Note:**

> This has been QUITE the journey to write. First, I'd like to thank not only the amazing fantastic wonderful fabulous mods of the anthology project, and my stupendous lovely incredible awesome art collaborator, [reyloart](http://reyloart.tumblr.com), as well as everyone who helped me through all the writer's block and plot points and keeping all the different iterations of this straight in my head, particularly [ViciousRhythm](http://http://archiveofourown.org/users/ViciousRhythm/pseuds/ViciousRhythm).
> 
> Second, important trivia: a "[geas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geis#Welsh_mythology)" (also "geis," pronounced "gesh," literally "taboo") is a type of curse or spell invoked in Irish or Scottish mythology (or, if you're dealing with the very similar "tynged," Welsh) in which, essentially, the victim has a condition they have to meet, and certain repercussions if they fail. Oft-seen geasa include "if you ever speak of your fairy lover you'll lose her" and my personal favorite "you cannot ever refuse to attend a feast thrown in your honor."
> 
> Check out the [mystery moodboard](http://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/post/150560765175/coming-soon-to-the-reylo-fanfiction-anthology-a) for my fic!
> 
> Poem quotes from original text of Le Lai du Chevrefeuille by Marie de France; translations by Judith P Shoaf
> 
> Title from the poem The Honeysuckle by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

J'ai bien envie de vous raconter  
la véritable histoire  
du lai qu'on appelle _Le chèvrefeuille_  
et de vous dire comment il fut composé et quelle fut son origine.

It's my pleasure and I want truly   
For the lai men call Chevrefoil   
(Honeysuckle), the truth to tell:   
Why it was made, how it all befell. 

 

Kylo Ren arrives on a stormy night, foreboding with a black surcoat and a black horse, hidden by the darkness until a flash of lightning illuminates him starkly against the landscape, glinting off his chainmail and helmet. Were anyone watching him closely, they would see that he approaches too quickly to be anything natural, his steed seeming to soar across the grass without ever touching the ground. When he reaches the gates of the wall, ignoring the shouting sentries, he throws his hand out in front of him and the heavy wooden doors fly open with a bang.

Guards throw themselves into his path, trying to stop him, but he doesn’t even bother to ride around them as he canters towards the castle. They’re forced to leap out of the way at the last second or be trampled by his warhorse’s heavy hooves. At the tall wooden castle doors, he pulls his steed to a halt and yanks the reins. It rears up on its hind legs and kicks the door open, neighing loudly. Lightning strikes in the background, illuminating the knight from behind as everyone turns to look, the clatter of a feast dying quickly to pin-drop silence.

Ren’s horse falls back to the ground and he spurs it forwards in a slow, ominous walk. All eyes are on him as he approaches the head table, the only sound in the high-ceilinged hall the strike of his horse’s hooves on the flagstone. The tense quiet holds as he stops in front of the high table, eye-to-eye on his tall horse with the seated king.

“Han Solo,” he says, his voice booming out from behind his helmet at a low timbre that can’t be natural.

The king rises so he can look down on the otherworldly knight. “What do you want?” His voice is strong, without a touch of fear or hesitation, and his gaze on the intruder is stony and solid. Silence broken, people start to murmur amongst themselves, wondering at the knight who seems to have walked straight out of a bard’s faerie-tale and into their St. Mark’s Day feast.

“I seek Sir Finn,” Ren replies, looking around the room. “He betrayed the Gray King and I’ve come to administer justice.”

“Sir Finn is under our protection,” the queen snaps from the dais, practically leaping out of her seat with a clatter. “You can’t have him.”

Kylo Ren looks at her, tilting his head as if considering. “I don’t believe that is your decision to make, Your Majesty. The law states-”

“Your law is  _ barbaric _ -”

The queen is interrupted by Ren rising in his stirrups and shouting, “ _ Silence _ ! The law is ancient, true, and  _ clear _ . Sir Finn must pay for his treachery.” He turns his horse, pacing it back and forth in the hall. “Come forward, coward!”

“I’m not a coward,” says a young knight, rising to his feet and glaring at Kylo Ren. “I left because it was  _ right _ . I’m a man of honor.”

“You,” Ren spits, “are a  _ traitor _ .” He tears off one leather-and-mail gauntlet and throws it to the ground at Finn’s feet. Finn passes around the table, but before he can get to the gauntlet, it’s snatched off the ground by another hand.

“I accept your challenge on Sir Finn’s behalf,” says another knight, strong-jawed and handsome with curly black hair and a fierce, protective glint in his eye as he holds the gauntlet out towards his challenger

Kylo Ren doesn’t move or speak for a long moment, and the second knight can feel his eyes on him, dagger-sharp and unwavering. “Very well,” Ren finally says, reaching out and taking the gauntlet, tucking it into his belt rather than replacing it on his hand. “Dawn.” And then he turns his great beast and rides out, leaving as quickly as he came.

The feast ends early that night.

 

“Poe, he’s going to  _ kill you _ !” Finn shouts, again, desperate and overwhelmed. “He doesn’t understand mercy or- or honor or  _ anything _ other than power! You can’t win this, Poe, please just let me-”

“No, I took the challenge, I’ll fight him.” He reaches out and takes Finn’s face in his hands. “I’m trying to protect you, Finn, please.”

Rey watches them from the window seat of her bedchamber, her knee drawn up to her chest, worrying at the wooden paternoster beads in her hand. She’d intended to start praying for Poe and not stop until the duel, but the two had gotten caught up arguing, back and forth, the same beseeching pleas over and over, each trying to save the other from Kylo Ren. Around the third time through, she’d given up trying to focus on prayer.

“Maybe he won’t kill Poe,” she says, speaking up for the first time, and they both pause to look at her, questions on their faces. “I mean- his quarrel is with Finn, right? If Finn fought him, he’d definitely die. But… technically the law is last man standing. If you cry craven-”

“Not a chance,” Poe protests.

Rey scowls and opens her mouth to protest, but Finn speaks up. “He can’t surrender, you know their majesties won’t outlaw him.”

“So?” Rey persists. Even after years of being royalty, she still struggles to have the same level of respect for codes of honor and propriety as the two warriors.

“I’d outlaw myself sooner than let them break the law like that.” Poe crosses his arms, frowning at her. “Surrender isn’t an option.”

She huffs. “Fine.”

“Besides, the point is to save Finn, not ensure I survive. If I lose, Finn is lost either way. I have to defeat him.”

“You can’t kill him!” Finn shouts, practically tearing at his hair. “He’s never been beat! This is a death sentence, Poe, just let me fight!”

Rey sighs, resting her forehead on her knee as they dig into the fight again, her mind racing, trying to find a solution. She tunes out the argument and starts praying, her lips moving in the shape of the words but her mind completely elsewhere. Technically, she should be focusing on the prayer, but... God will understand, she can’t possibly think about anything but trying to save her friends now.

They all end up falling asleep eventually, Poe and Finn curled close in her big four-poster bed, Rey leaning against the wall, fast asleep in the window. As the sky turns grey outside, a servant comes knocking, waking all three of them. She doesn’t have to say anything, and the three friends share a fearful glance as they start getting ready, Finn and Poe leaving for the armory, Rey gesturing the maid in to help her dress.

It feels like a funereal procession as they stand outside the castle in the dim, starry pre-dawn. Between blinks, Kylo Ren seems to melt out of the distant shadows, sitting tall and formidable on his enormous black horse, his gauntlet still tucked into his belt as if he’d just left the feast. Poe himself stands straight-backed and square-shouldered in front of the castle gates, one gloved hand on the pommel of his sword, nasal helm tucked under his arm, black hair tousled by the breeze. Ren dismounts a few yards away and approaches slowly, his footsteps as heavy as his horse’s, a full head taller than Poe, who stares defiantly up at the black greathelm covering Ren’s face. Wordlessly, Poe tugs his mail coif up to cover his head and dons his helm, drawing his sword from the scabbard at his hip.

The bastard sword Ren draws from his back is as dramatically enormous and heavy as everything else about him, and he charges forward with a yell. Poe, surprised by his speed, barely jumps out of the way in time, and then the duel begins in earnest.

Everything Ren has in power is matched by Poe’s speed, but Ren is almost inhumanly quick on his feet for someone so obviously suited more towards strength than agility. He matches Poe blow-for-blow, seeming to deflect almost effortlessly every strike against him. When he goes on the offensive though, Poe is like the wind, slipping over and under and around his blade, untouchably quick as he dodges. 

It’s Poe who lands the first blow, and Rey nearly screams herself hoarse as Kylo Ren takes a step back from the force of Poe’s sword catching his shoulder. There’s a moment of shocked hesitation, and then Kylo Ren squares his shoulders and everyone watching realizes that the battle hadn’t really begun until now.

It takes everything Poe has to stay ahead of Ren’s sword in the second half, dodging and swiping desperately. Ren ends up not even having to cut him- he just swipes a foot out at an opportune moment and sends Poe to the ground, kicking him soundly in the gut for good measure. Then he reaches out with his enormous broadsword, leveling it at Poe’s face. Poe stares up at him with hate in his eyes, coughing and gasping for breath. Kylo Ren twists his arm and nicks Poe’s cheek with the tip of his sword, a drop of blood welling up just under his eye.

“First blood,” he says, voice strangely soft under whatever enchantment warps it into something inhuman. “Now stay down.”

Kylo Ren turns to face the crowd, marching towards Finn, and Rey instinctively moves in front of him, gritting her teeth and reaching for the knife she keeps at her waist.

“Move, Rey,” Finn hisses, hand tight around her arm.

Rey’s lip lifts in a snarl, eyes fixed on Kylo Ren’s dark helmet, ignoring Poe as he struggles to his feet in the background. “I’m not letting you go without a fight.”

“Move aside, girl,” says Kylo Ren. “I have no quarrel with-”

He turns on his heel, as if startled, to catch Poe charging towards him, sword at the ready. When he swings towards the armored terror, Kylo Ren’s sword flies up almost effortlessly, severing Poe’s hand at the wrist.

“You have dishonored yourself,” he says as Poe stumbles backwards, arm clutched to his chest, blood soaking his tunic. “I will return in a year and a day for Sir Finn, and if you then still try to protect him from me, I will take that which you hold most dear.”

Kylo Ren pushes past Rey and Finn and disappears out of the castle gates.


	2. Chapter One: Dishonor/That Which You Hold

“Ren!” trills an elegant redhead, his elfin features twisted in an expression of distaste. “I see you’ve failed yet again.”

Kylo Ren doesn’t respond, just continues sharpening his sword.

“Snoke isn’t pleased, is he?”

“His Majesty,” Ren replies coolly, “has patience, a trait which you patently lack. They could not be persuaded to release the traitor to me, so I will return once my geas is up for him or the Millenium Falcon, whichever their majesties are more willing to give up. You’ll have your toy, Hux, one or the other.”

The redhead huffs. “What am I to hunt in the meantime, then?”

“Perhaps the sporting pursuit of a personality that isn’t wholly revolting could be beneficial,” Ren responds, examining the razor-edge of his blade in the cool, sharp light cast by the faerie lanterns floating and bobbing along the ceiling of the palace, ever in motion.

“Such wit,” sneers Hux, inspecting an axe with pronounced aloofness. “Treasure it, Ren, for at the end of the day, is wit not all you have, oh dreaded iron fist of Snoke, sharp-toothed hellhound with a leash shorter than-”

“Your cock?” Ren interrupts, never missing a beat or an opportunity, his controlled tone hiding the fury bubbling under the surface. Years as a slave and prisoner have taught him the importance of facade, if nothing else. “All the power and magic in the world can’t fix some things, your Highness.”

Hux flicks his fingers towards Ren, smirks triumphantly, and marches out. Kylo reaches up to where he felt the tingle of magic on his head and finds a pair of long, furry donkey’s ears situated neatly atop his head. He just sighs. “It could be worse,” he mutters to himself, sheathing his sword and thinking of the other humans who’ve passed through the Gray King’s court, the ones who weren’t as lucky as him, weren’t as young or gifted, didn’t have the miraculous stroke of luck that saved him to live as Snoke’s enforcer, rather than suffering one of the gruesome fates that often befell unfortunate mortals in his court.

His mind stills on Finn, the knight in Hosnian. They hadn’t known each other well; Finn was just a changeling kept on as a soldier, Ren the favorite of the king, but Ren still recognized him when he saw him, because he recognized himself. The weary, guarded expression of someone with years’ experience playing the complex games of the faeries, trying to keep himself alive while dancing on the knife’s edge. There’s a part of Ren, somewhere deep in his heart, that envies Finn, the way he just risked himself, risked  _ everything _ , to leave, running to a world where he didn’t even have a place, just so he wouldn’t have to stay. But Ren is pragmatic where Finn is idealistic, enduring where Finn is brave, so he turns away from the things he can’t bear and finds a way to survive the rest.

His weapons polished and sharpened and put away where they belong, Kylo Ren ducks through the kitchens, grabbing a hunk of the blandest bread he can find, a bit of stale cheese, ugly, untempting food that the finicky faeries won’t want or miss. He ignores the human girl kneeling on the floor, sobbing, scrubbing something from the floor- probably her own blood, judging by the state of her scraped hands and knees, most likely enchanted to keep the floor spotless, never able to rest or succeed in her task as fae traipse through the room, stepping over her and tracking mud on the floor. Kylo steps carefully, keeping his feet only in the footprints of others.

Next he wanders into the library, an area of the palace rarely frequented by its occupants, who would much rather revel than read. The only use it really sees is as a… relatively private space, and Kylo makes a face as he passes one such privacy-seeking pair tucked away in the stacks, moaning loudly. Most of the books here were gifts from mortal supplicants, or stolen. Kylo is probably the first person to set foot there in decades with the intention of actually  _ using _ the books, so there was no semblance of organization when he first found it a year into his service, just tomes thrown about helter-skelter, stacked as high as the ceiling, dust on every surface. He's started trying to sort through it, bring some order to the chaos, but it would be a feat even if he had all the time in the world. He's barely made a dent, and only partially because he stops to read about half the books he shelves. But it takes up his time, and it keeps him out from underfoot and away from the eyes of the court. Here, he's as safe as a mortal can be in the Gray King’s court. So the library is  _ his _ place. He makes sure he's never followed.

Kylo grabs a pile of tomes from the middle of the mess and makes his way to the back of the library, where there are sturdy shelves not yet bowed with the weight of hundreds of books stacked and wedged and jammed in wherever there's room the way the front shelves are. He picks up the first book off the top and glances at the title.

“ _ Le Lai du Chev _ \-  _ Chèvrefeuille _ ,” he murmurs to himself, then flips it open. “ _ E jeo l'ai trové en l'escrit e Tristram e de la reïne, de lur amur que tant fu fine _ .” His French is imperfect after years of disuse and he has to whisper the words slowly to himself, but he pieces together the story of the brave hero and the queen, who were in love despite the odds stacked against them. It's a lovely story, and he falls easily into it, and  _ that _ is why he hides in the library, because when he's lost in a book it's almost like he's not here at all.  _ Chèvrefeuille  _ carries him through the next three days, and so begins that year's imprisonment.

 

_ Eleven Months Later _

“Are you sure, your Majesty?” Finn asks, glancing up from where he’s knelt in front of King Han.

“We’ve been over this, Finn,” he replies, sounding as surly and exasperated as always, but hiding underneath it a certain fondness and concern that couldn’t be detected unless he was known well to the listener. “Yes, I’m certain. Go, take Poe, get away from here. Don’t tell anyone where, so we can’t give you away.”

“But he’ll take-”

“The Millenium Falcon,” Han finishes for him. “Listen, that damn enchanted chariot has been more trouble than it’s worth, someone always trying to steal it or kill me for it. If the Gray King wants it, it’s his. It wouldn’t be the first thing he’s taken from us, and he seems to think I care far more about it than I do. We would all rather you be safe, Finn.”

“The Gray King isn’t taking anyone else from us,” Leia insists, eyes ablaze. For a moment the silence hangs in the air, permeated with the collective thought of a name they all know but to which none will give voice.

“A year, then?” Finn asks, rising to his feet.

“A year.” The knight bows, and Han scoffs at him, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him into an embrace, Leia joining in.

When he turns around, Rey’s waiting behind him to throw her arms around his shoulders.

“Be safe,” she says, face pressed into his neck. “Look after each other. I’ll miss you.”

“Same to you, Princess.”

Poe’s waiting outside, and he sweeps Rey up in a hug as well, spinning her around, his wooden hand pressed into her shoulders. “I’ll be back before you know it, sunshine, don’t you worry.”

The two men mount their horses and ride off into the dawn, the castle gates shutting behind them like a period on the end of a sentence.

 

The first month without Poe and Finn is nearly interminable for Rey- between missing them, worrying about them, worrying about Kylo Ren coming back, and being bored out of her mind without her friends, the passage of time feels like waiting for still water to wear a stone smooth. But it passes, as it does, and then the year-and-a-day arrives, and the whole castle tenses, strung tight like a bowstring, ready to snap at any second.

This time, he arrives quietly, a little while after sunset, when the first handfuls of stars are crawling out of the night. He dismounts his horse in the courtyard and the king and queen are there to meet him. Rey sits in a window on the second floor, watching from a distance but pretending to read, her paternoster beads forgotten by her side where she’d meant to be praying.

“Sir Finn isn’t here,” says the king, after a stretch of silence. “And we don’t know where he is, so don’t bother asking. Just take the damned Falcon and be on your way.”

Kylo Ren considers him for a long moment, then raises his hand towards the sky, murmuring something under his breath in a language Han doesn’t think he’d understand even if he could hear it. Magic. Kylo Ren’s hand falls back by his side and he waits, patiently, for the chariot to appear.

Instead, Rey comes stumbling out of the castle, looking panicked, a maidservant tugging desperately on her hand. Her feet move unnaturally, dragging along the ground as if she’s not in control of them, her slippers wearing quickly on the rough stone.

“Rey, go back inside,” Leia orders, but the princess just shakes her head.

“I-I can’t,” she gasps, halfway in tears. “I don’t know what’s happening, I can’t stop, help me, please, I-” She stumbles forward into Kylo Ren’s chest and his arm comes up reflexively around her. Her legs finally stop their advance and she’s still.

There’s a long silence wherein everyone stands frozen, and Rey breaks it by screaming, “Let me go, you  _ monster _ ,” and pushing away from Kylo Ren. As soon as she stumbles back a step, though, the magic stirs again, yanking her towards him.

Han reaches towards Rey as if to snatch her back, and Kylo Ren pulls her out of his reach, almost possessive. “You want the Falcon, you can take it,” the king says, desperate, “but leave her out of this!”

“The price,” Kylo Ren says evenly, “was that which you hold most dear.”

And then he mounts his horse, swinging Rey up in front of him, and rides away.

His horse is fast, faster than any horse Rey’s ever ridden, but then she blinks and it’s going too fast, the world rushing by in an unnatural blur, and her head spins and her stomach churns and she pounds a fist on Kylo Ren’s chest.

“Stop,” she gasps out. “Stop, please, I’m going to be sick, it’s too-”

The beast slows, green blurs giving way to fields, and she topples gracelessly off, falling to her knees and retching. Rey doesn’t notice the hand rubbing circles onto her back until the nausea has passed. She turns, pulling herself away from him, revolted.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” Rey snarls, swatting his hand away from her. He rises to his feet and pulls off his other glove, and some instinct keeps her tense until he steps away. And then he takes off his helmet, and he's  _ beautiful  _ underneath. Despite each of his features individually being large and dramatic, they come together to form a whole that is too much for her to look on, too difficult to reconcile with the monster who cut off Poe’s hand and took her from her home, so she looks away. 

The second time she gets on the horse, there's no grabbing or hoisting or manhandling, he just swings himself up and settles as far back in the saddle as he can go, then reaches down and, hands around her waist, lifts her up in front of him. She sits sidesaddle, his arms on either side holding the reins and caging her in but kept as far from her as the limited space allows. He starts the horse off at a walk, then a trot. When he speaks without the helmet, his voice sounds like a man's, deep and soft and surprising after the enchanted helmet’s gravelly, inhuman sound.

“I’m going to go fast again,” he tells her, too close to her face despite his efforts. “It helps if you close your eyes.” Rey nods, still holding her body away from his, and squeezes her eyes shut. She feels the change from a normal gallop to the enchanted speed with a gentle jolt, like the horse is just changing feet, and only knows for sure when she hears him murmur “I'm sorry.”

And Rey is afraid, and she has no idea where they are or how far they've come, and she's trying not to resign herself to the fact that she's going to die a horrible faerie-slave death, and between all that and his quiet apology, his attempts at defanged gentleness, she gives herself the small comfort of leaning into his chest, the warm, leather-and-metal-and-sweat smell of his body reminding her just enough of Finn and Poe to both hurt and console. His arms get a little closer, and he leans forward, so she's encircled by him, close enough to touch but only just. Despite everything, it makes the fear somehow less daunting, gives her strength.

She  _ will _ survive this.

 

She falls asleep shortly after midnight. Kylo can't see her well in the gloom, with his eyes fixed ahead, but he feels her slump against him, warm and soft and pliant, and he wraps an arm around her to hold her there.

Kylo is afraid. He's deeply, intrinsically terrified, not only for himself, for what his failure to procure the Falcon will mean, but for her. He's likely at least to survive Snoke’s wrath, but it's because he's  _ useful _ . Snoke won't destroy the tool he's spent twenty years and a lot of effort crafting, but the girl sitting in front of Kylo- girl only, because he doesn't dare think what else she might be, what it might mean, the way the king and queen screamed after her, as if-

Well. She's not of use to Snoke, and he's not one to just send back his prizes, even if they're not the ones he wanted. Kylo doesn't want to imagine the fates in store for her, what creative torture Snoke might devise, how he might entertain his court with her death. She has nothing to protect her.

_ Nothing but me _ , he finds himself thinking, his hold on her tightening, a surge of something fierce and unfamiliar right behind his heart. He chooses not to examine it, puts his mind instead to trying to find a way to keep her alive and get her back to her home.

It's strange, to have a purpose outside of his own self-preservation. Strange, but- pleasant.


	3. Chapter Two: Journey/Any Forest Every Forest

They ride all night. Rey is exhausted down to her bones, so she doesn't notice she's drifted off until she wakes with a jolt as the horse stops. Kylo Ren doesn’t move for a moment, and neither does Rey, languishing in the haze of confusion between sleep and waking, pressed up against his chest, one of his arms around her while the other grips the reins. But then she comes back to herself and pulls away from him, his arm falling away obligingly when she moves.

“We can camp,” he offers, “if you like. If you're tired.”

Rey looks at the forest around him, the soft light of dawn just beginning to caress the trees, and bites her lip in thought, trying to look small and tired and afraid. The weaker he thinks she is, the better. “Yes,” she says, finally, her voice as meek as she can manage. “Please.”

She makes note of the direction from which they'd come, what looks like a gradual, distant thinning of trees, and bolsters her courage.

“I know how to pitch a camp,” she says, “if you want to collect firewood.”

He nods once, absently, and makes his way into the trees. Rey wants to cry from happiness- what a fool, leaving his prisoner alone with his horse. She waits until he's gone, well out of earshot, and then she leaps into action, yanking saddlebags off the back of the horse, making it as light as she can. The beast doesn’t even seem bothered, its tail flicking lazily as she yanks her skirts up scandalously high, baring most of her legs, and swings herself astride it. The horse is obliging when she spurs it into movement, riding hard on the faint deer trail she can pick out between the trees. Trees fly by, the fastest horse she's ever ridden without having to even use its enchantment, but she doesn't seem to be approaching any sort of clearing or thinning of trees. She presses on, her whole body humming with the adrenaline rush of escape.

After almost a quarter hour of hard riding, she spots a figure in the distance, and she squints to see it's Kylo Ren, his arms full of firewood, staring her way, so she yanks the horse into a hard turn and keeps going.

Ten minutes later, there he is again, the firewood abandoned by the pile of saddlebags. She turns and keeps going.

Rey must be going in circles, because she keeps ending up back at him, sooner and sooner each time. Her legs are sore and her heart is still hammering so enthusiastically she feels as though it'll give out. Tears stream down her face the sixth, seventh time she turns away from Kylo Ren.

“Stop going back to him!” she begs the horse. Its ears flick back as if to acknowledge her, and the next time she spots him she doesn't even have to tug the reins and the horse is turning. “Thank you,” she whispers, leaning in closer.

 

Kylo watches her ride away from him again and again, the sound of hoofbeats fading less with every turn. His heart twists painfully, but he doesn’t try to stop her- between the forest and the enchantment Snoke puts on all his horses’ shoes to keep them from escaping, she could ride forever and still never get away from him. He wishes she could.

The circles the horse runs around him get tighter and tighter until it's stopped in front of him, a sobbing, shaking Rey bent over its neck.

“Let me go!” she screams at him. “You didn't even want me, _please_!”

 _I would if I could_ , he thinks to himself. Instead, he turns his attention towards the pitching of camp, leaving her to sit slumped on the horse, head buried in her arms.

The motions of setting up a campsite are as familiar to him as breathing, drilled into him as a child and then solidified by necessity as he started to accompany the faerie court on hunts. He loses himself in it, the mental checklist, the familiarity, and it takes a while for him to notice Rey helping.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she snaps. “Just because I'm a princess doesn’t mean I'm incompetent.”

 _Princess_. Kylo's blood freezes. There's a moment of grief, of fury, then resignation. Of course they moved on. Of course they replaced him. They never came back for him, why did he expect them to mourn him? Children die, in their world. They die, they are buried, and more are born. He's not sure why he ever expected anything different. He's not sure why he thought he was special.

“So you are their daughter, then,” he says, his tongue somehow managing to form the words around the heavy choke in his throat.

She smiles, softly, fleetingly, and it hurts to resent her for the circumstances of her birth. “Well, yes and no. I'm an orphan.” His gut clenches. Not theirs, then. He doesn’t know if that's better. “I was eight when they took me in. I was alone for years before that, begging in the streets when I couldn’t find petty work. Their son was kidnapped, almost twenty years ago-”

“Yes,” he interrupts, carefully controlling the force of his emotions in his hands as he sets the fire. “I know the story.” _I know my story_.

“You would,” she replies, venomous. “After all, it was your Gray King who stole him.”

Kylo has nothing to say to that.

Rey finally speaks again after a while, sitting in front of a quietly crackling campfire, picking at the bread offered her out of one of the saddlebags.

“Where are we?” she asks, drilling a hole into her bread with her finger, past the hard parts to pick out the soft. Kylo feels a rush of shame, that he postures himself a man of chivalry and yet feeds a princess stale bread.

“The forest,” he replies, offering her his bread. She ignores it. He puts it away, still embarrassed.

“Which one?”

Kylo blinks at her, baffled. “I don’t know. Any forest. Every forest. Does it matter?”

It’s Rey’s turn to look puzzled now. “Yes, of course it matters, if you don’t know where we are how are we supposed to get where we’re meant to go?” she demands, as if he were a fool. “I can’t just walk in any random direction and expect to eventually get to London, I have to walk _towards_ London.”

It occurs to him, then, that she's _mortal._ He understands the finicky, arbitrary nature of magic because he grew up with it, because it flows through his veins and hums in his bones and keeps him alive. She’s mortal. She still has prayer beads hooked to her belt, and it rattles him. She'll learn, he knows, that God has no place in Snoke’s court. He wishes she didn't have to. But she does need to understand magic, to survive. So he sighs, and tries to parse the ancient knowledge that lives underneath his skin into a verbal explanation. “It’s not… the Gray King’s court isn’t a place you can find on a map. Going there doesn’t… it’s not like going to London, it’s more like getting on a boat. The boat can be anywhere, but no matter where it is, you have to get onto it from a dock. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. You have to go through a forest to get to Snoke’s court, but it doesn’t matter which forest, either, any one will do.”

Rey frowns, and he shrugs helplessly. “Magic doesn’t always make sense; it’s best to just know the rules.”

“I don't need to know anything,” she replies, “since I _will_ escape as soon as I can.”

Kylo frowns severely at her. “Be careful what you say, Princess. You're in his world now, and you never know who's listening.”

 

After they eat, there's really nothing to do _._ Rey considers praying, but she has a sneaking, awful suspicion that even if God could hear her out here, His power doesn’t reach this sinister, arcane place. She feels more alone than she ever has, completely without allies, and she wraps her arms around herself in an approximation of comfort.

Kylo Ren seems to always be busy, in that way that knights are, polishing and sharpening and inspecting, their weapons and armor their life. His hands are quick and strong and steady, and if she just watches them it's almost like being home again, watching Finn and Poe work, down to the way Poe always runs his fingers lightly over the chainmail, checking for tiny imperfections, dents and rusting and roughness, turns it inside out and checks the reverse side as well.

“Luke always says all the skill in the world won't save your life if your armor fails you,” he'd explained once. “Armor is the most important thing. Protect yourself, then defend yourself.”

Finn never quite scoffed at this, but he confessed to Rey once that he still found it strange, the way Poe had been taught to focus on surviving rather than winning a battle, how drastically it differed from his own training, where lives were irrelevant in the face of victory.

Rey glances at Kylo, his chainmail spread across his lap, dressed now in only a thin shirt. She could kill him, she realizes. There's a knife _right_ there, if she just-

“I know what you're thinking,” he says, looking up at her for a moment. “I wouldn't recommend it.”

Rey bristles, ready to talk back, but he grabs the knife she was eyeing and settles his hand on the ground between them, raising the knife above it. She realizes what he's doing just as he brings it down, fast and hard, and she lunges forward with a cry, to stop him, but it's unnecessary. The knife hits the skin of his hand and glances off, as if he'd tried to stab stone. She stares slack jawed as he does it again, and again.

“How…?” she finally manages to choke out.

“It’s a geas,” he replies, sheathing the knife carefully. “A deal I made with the Gray King. I'm invulnerable.”

Rey feels hot fury rise in her chest, and then before she can stop herself she's grabbed a rock and hurled it at his head. “You _cheat_ !” she shrieks, leaping forward to hit him. “Poe never had a _chance_ \- he should have won, and you-! You bastard!”

He catches her wrists in midair. “He's alive, isn't he? He's alive, and he'd be unharmed if he hadn't tried to attack me while my back was turned, after he _lost._ ”

Rey tears her hands out of his grip. “He was just trying to save the man he loved!” she screams, and then immediately claps her hands over her mouth.

But Kylo Ren just looks away. “He succeeded, didn't he? Finn’s alive and well. But at what cost?”

“Don't you dare try and blame the fact that _you_ kidnapped me on _him_ ,” she snarls.

“I'm not. I'm only- everything comes at a cost. You can't gain anything without losing something. Poe knows that.”

“He'd still try, though,” Rey says softly, sitting back down and curling her arms around herself again. “Poe would always try to save everyone.”

There’s a long pause before Kylo asks, “He lives, though? Poe?”

Rey’s mouth twists in a wry grin. “I can’t tell you,” she says, laying down on the softest patch of ground she can find. “You never know who's listening.”

 

That night, long after she’s meant to be asleep, when the fire is weak and low, Rey travels back to the long, frigid nights of her childhood, sleeping in stables and abandoned shacks. _When I survive tonight, tomorrow will be better_ , she told herself, every night, like a mantra. It was a game she played, promising herself a reward for making it through one more hard night. _I’ll have food tomorrow_ , she used to say, sometimes. _I’ll find someplace to sleep_ , other times. She never kept herself to the vows she made in the dark of sleepless nights, but hope was better than nothing.

“When I survive tonight,” she whispers, pressing her face into her hands to muffle the sound, “I’ll escape in the morning.”

The crickets, her only audience, chirp obligingly.

“When I survive tonight, I’ll go home tomorrow.”

 

Kylo wakes first in the morning, and takes about five minutes to decide that a gentle shake is the best way to rouse the princess.

“Despite the enchantment, we _do_ need to travel to get where we're going,” he explains to her. She shakes her head, mumbling something about how ridiculous faeries are, and helps him saddle the horse. “You can ride,” he says, “I'll walk.” At her unimpressed look he purses his lips. “Would you rather we rode together for hours again?”

She mounts the horse alone.

“Finn told me the Gray King is awful,” Rey says, with the flippant tone of someone who knows her words will eventually reach the one they're about and could not be persuaded to care for love or money.

Kylo takes a moment to think, considers his response. Snoke doesn’t want love from his vassals, just loyalty, just obedience. Kylo's opinion is irrelevant, as long as he continues to obey. “...I won’t say I disagree with him,” he responds, finally, carefully.

“Then why do you stay in his service? It isn’t dishonorable to leave a dishonorable lord.”

Kylo grimaces, his moral conundrum of years laid out before him again. He provides his standard argument. “Leaving would break the geas. I’d be vulnerable again-- and the Gray King would hunt me.”

“And it’s not worth it, to you? Doing the honorable thing?”

“In my experience, nothing is worth dying for.”

Rey looks at him like he is disgusting, and he agrees.

 

The fire crackles gently in front of them as night falls, and the words fall out of Kylo's mouth before he can stop them.

“They never came back for him, you know. Your prince.”

Rey frowns at him for a long time. “Yes, they did. The Gray King tricked them.”

Kylo's throat catches, and he can barely manage a response around the whirlwind of his mind. “How?”

“He took them to a room full of sleeping boys who all looked just like the prince, and he told them that parents who truly loved their child, genuinely wanted him back, would know the real one. They were so certain, he even had- he looked _just like_ their son, and when they left, when they got back to their world, the boy was just… just a wooden doll. They tried for _years_ to get back, but-”

“When?” Kylo demands. “When did this happen?”

Rey looks at him strangely, surprised by his aggressiveness. “A fortnight after he was stolen, but why does it matter? The prince was probably dead by then anyway, knowing the fae.”

Kylo’s head spins. “No, no, that couldn’t- I- the prince was in the dungeon a _year_ , they never released….”

Rey glares at him. “Your master is a deceitful monster, a child-stealer, and still you remain in his service.”

Kylo stands and walks into the trees, ignoring the whispers of the forest around him, the hum of enchantment ready to claim him. He doesn’t care. He starts running. The forest can have him.

 

He returns just before dawn, to Rey curled up next to the smoldering embers of a burnt out fire. For a long time he just watches her sleep, and then she jerks awake, as if from a nightmare.

“You're back,” she says, sleepy, and his heart twists.

“I am.” He settles down on the other side of the fire. “I'm sorry I left.”

“I can take care of myself,” she mumbles, eyes already half closed.

“I don’t doubt it.”

 

On the third day, a strange sort of tension has settled between them- Rey can tell there's more to Kylo Ren than he's letting on, but she isn't sure she wants to know, so she doesn't press.

“Tell me more,” he says, strolling alongside the horse through endless twisting woods, “about your home.”

“Why?” she asks, challenging. He frowns at her, considers.

“I'm not your enemy,” he tells her. “I didn't want to take you. I'm probably the only ally you have, Princess. The Gray King and his court… they're not kind, they're not merciful. The only way you'll survive this is by being clever, by knowing what to do and what to say, and I'm your best chance.”

“Why would you help me?” she asks, with a stubborn tilt to her chin. “And why should I trust you?”

“We're more alike than you realize.”

Rey bristles, biting back the words _I'm nothing like you._

But in a world like the Gray King’s, Kylo Ren may well be the closest thing she has to a friend.

After a pause, she decides. “Very well. Tell me what I need to know.”

“First of all, you can't use your name. Your name is your essence; if they know it they can curse you. Never say your name out loud, not where a faerie can hear it.”

“What's your true name?” she asks, more out of curiosity than anything.

He hesitates. “I don't remember,” he lies after a beat. “It’s been too long.”

“How long have you been in the Gray King’s service?”

“Nearly twenty years.” There’s a weight barely hidden in his voice, a measure of grief and suffering that makes her not want to press, makes her sympathize.

“That's a long time.”

“You can’t imagine.”

“So,” she says, “false name. What else?”

“Never take anything a faerie offers you. It's a trick, every time. Food, jewelry, whatever it is. You're a princess, you know how to refuse things diplomatically.”

“You put a lot of faith in my abilities.”

“I believe it to be justified.” He's sincere, and she sits up a little straighter for the compliment.

“So what's the magic of the forest? Why do we have to wander around?”

“It knows where we want to go, and it takes us there. Forests are… they exist between worlds. They're never quite one place or another, they're something else on their own. But forests are just forests without intent and timing- you have to know where you want to go, and you have to enter the forest at dawn or dusk, in-between times. After three days and three nights, we leave at the same time that we entered.”

“So if we entered at dawn, and today is the third day, we leave at dawn tomorrow?”

“Exactly.”

“So could I go anywhere?” she asks, almost leaning off the horse towards him. “Avalon? Heaven?”

“Avalon, perhaps.” He pauses, glances at the prayer beads still fixed to her waist. “I'm not sure Heaven is real.”

Rey shrinks into herself a bit. “I had a feeling….”

“Spend long enough in the faery world and you'll lose faith in a just God too,” he says, and she slumps further. He looks a little worried as he reaches out to touch her ankle in a gesture of comfort. “You don’t need divine intervention, Rey, you're smart and brave and capable. You'd have escaped ten times over if not for all the magic preventing it.”

“And isn’t it magic that's going to kill me?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he asserts, fiercely, looking as surprised as she feels at his insistence.

She reaches down and brushes her fingers across his hand. “Thank you.”

 

Kylo tries not to grind his teeth as he walks, leading the horse, weighing his options in his head, the touch of her fingers still lingering faintly on his skin. It will gain him nothing to protect her, and he owes the king and queen nothing, but-

He looks up at her, and the way late afternoon light filters through the trees makes her seem ethereal, beautiful and bright and good, a benevolent queen of the otherworld like Lanval’s lover or Laudine, and he thinks she deserves to have what he's now lost forever, the life that should have been his, the crown and scepter and knights and chivalry and a king who adores and respects her- Poe, or more likely Finn, for he's known both and he thinks Finn’s gentle demeanor and lion’s heart more suited to her than Poe’s boldness and romanticism- and he decides that, yes, she is worth saving. She is worth the risk.

He's not sure either of them sleeps that night, and when the sky begins to go gray at the edges, he rises and armors himself as if going to battle. They ride out of the forest together just as the sun breaks over the horizon.


	4. Chapter Three: Gray King/The Otherworld Court

The faerie world is somehow both familiar and surreal. It looks like any other wide, open field, dotted with copses of trees and farmland and cottages, but there's just the sheen of something  _ more _ over it all, something breathlessly ethereal, like she's looking at everything from the top of a mountain. And then one of the cottages stands up on two chicken legs and  _ moves. _

“It’s rude to stare.” The return of Kylo Ren’s modified voice makes her jump, but she can hear the hint of amusement underneath, and she rolls her eyes and smacks him lightly on the arm, like she would a friend.

“How far is it to... where we're going?” Rey realizes she doesn't actually know where the evil king lives, whether it's a castle or a cave or a magic cottage with legs.

“It should only take about an hour or two of riding, if we came out where I think we did and nothing has moved in my absence.”

Rey is about to exclaim about the possibility of the land moving, but then she remembers things are magic here and decides to stop being surprised by anything at all. “And do we have a plan when we get there?”

“Do you trust me?”

“As much as one can trust a surly, secretive knight who's sworn his protection.” She's only half teasing.

“Then just follow my lead.”

The castle, as they approach, takes Rey’s breath away. It's more of a palace than a castle, shining spires reaching towards the sky, made of something too silvery-bright to be stone, roofed in gold and jewels like something out of a dream.

“It's  _ beautiful _ ,” she breathes, trying not to gape.

“Everything in this world is,” Kylo Ren replies, taking his arm from around her waist and returning it to the reins. She tries not to miss it. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

Rey looks away from the castle, its beauty turned garish, the glamor unsettling.

The gate swings open on its own as they approach, and Rey doesn’t see anyone, but gets the feeling she's being watched regardless. She sits up straighter, stares directly ahead, and puts on the appearance of poise despite three days in the forest.

Kylo Ren stops before the door into the palace and swings down off his horse. When Rey follows him down, he grabs her roughly by the arm and pulls her along next to him, all prior gentleness gone. She cooperates, hoping desperately her trust in him isn't misplaced.

Every door opens to them as they approach it, yet they don't see a single soul as they pass through the corridors. Rey opens her mouth to ask where everyone is, but then the final door to the great hall opens and the question dies on her tongue.

Seated and sprawled and sleeping on every surface are an array of the most diverse creatures and people Rey could have imagined in a hundred years. Everything from lithe, beautiful faeries to hog-nosed gargoyles, creatures that could pass for men if not for the glimmering sheen of their skin and others who seemed made entirely of mist or living flora, and every last one falls silent and turns at their entrance.

“The iron fist returns!” jeers one, while another throws a hunk of meat at Kylo Ren’s head. He raises a hand without looking and an invisible force bats it out of the air to a chorus of disappointed boos.

Kylo Ren brings her in front of the head table, to a creature large and gray, draped in endless black robes and nearly human, if not for the jagged scars disfiguring his death's head beyond recognition. At a shove from Kylo Ren, Rey falls to her knees, head bowed, but he keeps his hand on her shoulder.

“What is  _ this _ ?” says the black robed creature, who must be the Gray King. “I asked you to bring me a  _ chariot _ , Ren, are you an imbecile?”

The court laughs uproariously.

“The price,” Kylo Ren says coolly, as if unperturbed, even though Rey can feel his fingers tighten momentarily on her shoulder, “was that which the king of Hosnian held most dear. Apparently, that was not the chariot.”

The Gray King snorts. “Mortals can be so  _ sentimental _ . Who is she?”

“She is the crown princess of Hosnian.”

There's a murmur around the court, and several creatures lean forward in interest.

“Another one?” sighs a red-headed, shining faerie draped artfully over a smaller throne to the Gray King's right, bored and condescending. He quirks an eyebrow in superior amusement. “They just can't seem to hold onto their royalty, can they, Ren?”

Another laugh travels around the room, and the redhead smirks. Rey feels a hot, angry flush travel up her neck. Kylo Ren’s free hand fists tight, the creak of leather barely audible to Rey despite her nearness.

“She's their daughter, then?” asks the King around a grin of his own.

“Their ward,” Kylo Ren replies tightly. “An orphan. But royalty nonetheless, and valuable.”

“Tell me, Ren, what am I to do with her?” The King leans forward onto his elbows, long fingers toying with a bejeweled goblet.

“Ransom her back to them, in exchange for the chariot.” Rey’s breath catches in her throat and she can't help but pray, just for a moment.

The King sits back in his throne, takes a thoughtful drink from his goblet. “No,” he says finally, and Rey releases her breath in a gust, her stomach sinking. “I don't give things back once they're mine, Ren, you know that.” Rage rises in Rey again, her lip curling in a snarl,  _ I am not a thing and I am not yours _ sitting on the tip of her tongue, but Kylo Ren squeezes her shoulder and she bites back her response, for safety's sake.

“It would be a waste to kill her, Your Majesty. She is valuable.” Rey could hit him- how  _ dare _ he talk about her value, as if she were a tapestry or a well-bred horse.

“That is true,” the King says. He turns to the redhead, who has been staring into his own wineglass with the utmost of haughty boredom, entirely too important to even put up a pretense of interest. Rey hates him the most. “What do you think I should do with her, Hux?” The question holds the weight of implication, as if there’s a meaning behind it Rey is missing. She’s half glad, because she doesn’t think she wants to understand this world, but half terrified as well, because this is all the viciousness of politics without any of the etiquette.

His sharp, unnervingly blue eyes snap to Rey and roam over her, appraising. Rey wants to vomit. “She is pretty,” he says, finally, as if it pains him greatly to admit, “for a mortal.” There’s a beat of silence, and Rey’s heart pounds. “Sell her,” he decides, turning his attention back to his wineglass. “She’ll make a fine prize for someone, I’m sure.”

“Very well,” the Gray King says, settling back in his throne. “Meanwhile, Ren, how am I to get my chariot, since you’ve so thoroughly botched this?”

“A competition,” Kylo Ren answers, after a moment’s pause. “Whoever brings you the chariot wins the girl.”

The King laughs. “A novel proposal. I like it.” He raises his glass. “Send out your champions!” he announces to the hall at large. “Whoever brings me my chariot wins the mortal princess for a prize.” The hall roars its approval, and the revelry resumes as if it were never interrupted. Kylo Ren drags Rey to her feet, leading her out of the hall. The doors keep opening in front of them, and then he ducks into a side door, hidden behind a tapestry. Gilded marble gives way to stone, ornate passages replaced by simple corridors, and his hand slips from her arm down to her hand, the leather warm against her fingers.

She lets him lead her down a few more twists and turns, fury burning in every inch of her body, into a windowless, spartan chamber, then yanks her hand away from his. “How could you?”

“What?” He pulls his helmet off, revealing bewilderment.

“You- you  _ sold _ me-”

“I saved you! They would have killed you!”

Rey’s jaw ticks. “I'd rather be dead than auctioned off to those- those  _ creatures _ !”

“No, no,” he insists, reaching towards her. “None of them will ever get their hands on you, I promise.”

“Why should I believe you? You're one of them.”

His face falls as if she'd struck him. “What?”

“You’ve used  _ magic _ ,” she spits.

“I'm not like them,” he says, earnest. “I swear. I'm mortal. I'm like you.” He reaches for her again, and this time she lets him take her hand in his. “I'm mortal,” he says again, his dark eyes burning into hers, “and I’m going to protect you, from the king, from all of them. I’ll swear it on anything you want me to, I will keep you safe, to my last breath.”

“How?” she asks, proud that her voice doesn’t quaver, dizzy from fear and from the flint-eyed determination in his expression.

“I’ll get the Falcon, and then I’ll win you,” he replies, and it feels like the air leaves her lungs as she just stares at him. “I will get you home, Rey.”

“Swear it,” she says, hoarsely. “Swear it on your honor as a knight, so I know you won’t betray me.”

“I’m not a real knight,” he replies, “but….” He releases her hand, tugs off his glove, pulls out a small knife, and cuts a long slash across his palm. Blood springs up immediately in a stark red line on his pale skin. “I swear,” he says, in a grave voice, “on my life, that I will do everything in my power to return you to your home.” He closes his fist, tight, and for a moment a soft red light glows between his fingers. When he opens his hand again, a thin red ribbon sits coiled on the spot where his wound had been, and he takes it and ties it around her wrist. “There,” he says. “You have my word.”

She runs her finger over the satiny strip, fiddling with the ends. “How is it you can do magic, if you’re mortal?”

“Another geas,” he responds. “Snoke granted me faerie magic, as long as I stay in his world a year for every day I spend in your world.”

“Our world,” she corrects, unthinking. He smiles sadly.

“I don’t belong to any world,” he says, and her heart twists. “Not really.”

Rey doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just pulls her sleeve down to cover the ribbon. “Are you going to duel for the Falcon again?”

“No. I’ll get it without hurting anyone else.”

“How?”

“I have a plan.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. Faerie champions fight dirty, there’s nothing they won’t do if it means getting an advantage over the competition. The less you know, the safer you are. Just trust me.”

Rey nods, solemn, unafraid. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just remember what I told you: don’t take anything from them, don’t tell them anything, especially not your name. Be careful what you say; someone’s almost always listening.”

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself for the struggle ahead. “Call me Kira, then.”

 

Rey knows what it is to be a princess, to smile and curtsy and charm, and this is nothing like that. She sits at the table in the Great Hall that night, looking around the room at an entirely different group of faeries, pretending to sip her wine and eat her food, trying not to look at Kylo Ren standing statuesque in the corner of the room, despite the temptation. His presence is a comfort, one she finds herself wanting to remember every time she gets the distinct, crawling feeling of being leered at by one of the Gray King’s guests.

And then the door opens, and a pair of pretty girls with long hair and wan faces limp into the room, their gait jerky as if pulled along on puppets’ strings. Rey wonders for a moment what they’re doing, but then faeries start applauding, and it begins to dawn on her. When the Gray King snaps his fingers, a man sitting at the foot of the dais begins strumming a lute, and Rey sees him wince with every note, as if the playing is painful. Her empty stomach begins to fill with a sense of dread, and it only deepens as the two girls begin to dance, their movements artificially graceful, their faces betraying the magic forcing their limbs to move. Rey feels sick, hugging her arms against herself, remembering how it felt to have her feet move against her will, reeling at the thought of that happening every single day for however long these girls had been slaves, but along with her horror comes a guilty sort of relief that it’s them and not her. She’s never wanted so desperately to run from a room as she does now, frozen in her seat and unable to tear her eyes from the dancers, as if magic holds her in place as well.

“Are you not entertained?” asks a pointy-chinned individual to her left, his dragonfly wings fluttering as iridescent eyes narrow, looking her up and down.

Rey opens her mouth to reply, but words catch in her throat, and she only manages to stutter out something unintelligible before she’s interrupted by someone on his left. “Oh, leave her, Bala-Tik, she’s a  _ mortal _ , you know how they get.”

Bala-Tik snorts, and Rey’s almost grateful for the flare of anger that cuts through her cold disgust, but she presses her lips together with a princess’s practiced poise and turns away from him. A moment later, one of the dancing girls stumbles, crying out in pain, and there’s a chorus of grumbling from the faeries. Rey looks at the girl, then at the Gray King. He twirls his hand, and the girl seems to lift off the floor for a moment, spinning around, and the crowd claps again. The light catches on her face and Rey can see tear tracks, and she decides she’s had enough.

“Excuse me,” she says, to no one in particular, rising from her seat and walking towards the rows of doors at the back of the room, struggling to remember which one she and Kylo came in through.

“Wrong way,” comes an unnatural voice in her ear, a gloved hand on her arm, and she’s never been so grateful to hear the unsettling timbre of his helmeted voice as he leads her towards another door. Once they’re alone, she reaches towards his helmet, and he jerks back, catching her hands in midair.

“Please,” she says, her voice wavering. “I need to see someone human.”

He seems to hesitate for a moment, but his grip loosens, his hands over hers as she takes his helmet off, and he takes it from her, leaving her hands to hover in the air next to his face. Her mind catches up with her and she steps away from him, tucking her hands into her sleeves and turning her face to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks.

Kylo considers her for a moment, then takes her by the hand. “Follow me,” he says, “I have something to show you.”

 

Snoke’s castle is littered with secret doors, hidden expertly in walls and behind tapestries, leading to twisting, winding corridors within the wall. Kylo believes they may have had a purpose at one point, perhaps for servants’ use. Now that the servants are mostly mortals in thrall or debt or curse and the fae take cruel pleasure in their subjugation and suffering, the idea of hiding them away out of sight is preposterous.The secret corridors and hidden rooms are in almost total disuse- except for Kylo, who navigates the castle almost exclusively through these passages, living in a tiny, sparsely furnished room wedged between two guest chambers, inaccessible except by the secret corridors. It keeps him safe, out of sight of the fae and thus out of their minds as well, and now it will keep her safe as well.

Tonight, he leads her through the secret halls, up winding staircases, to the highest tower in the castle, accessible only by a locked and forgotten door. When he helps her up onto the flat top, she walks to the edge as if in a trance, and he follows.

Rey leans on the stone battlement and breathes deep the night air. Below them, the fields and forests are dotted with lights to match the stars above. The wind plays with Rey’s hair, tugs at the silvery fabric of her faerie dress, spun from spiderwebs and whispers. The quiet night settles around them for a moment, before he breaks it.

“I remember what it was like,” he says, “seeing it for the first time. They way they treat us.”

“It’s abominable,” she says.

“To them, we’re animals. Our short, fragile lives aren’t worth anything.”

“How can you stand it?” she asks, turning to look at him. “Twenty years- how do you bear it?”

“There’s a balance,” he says. “For all the horror, their world is… beautiful.” He gestures out at the landscape before them. She surveys it, and he sees some of the tension leave her shoulders. “I just remind myself, when it’s too much, that there’s more. That there’s wonder.”

“There is,” she says, looking out at the world as he looks at her.

They are alone on top of the world, and for now, there is peace.


	5. Chapter Four: Geas/No Weapon Shall Harm

“Who were you?” she asks, one day, sitting with him on the edge of a reflective pool in the woods outside the castle, watching small creatures that might be insects or pixies dance in the air just above the water. “Before you were Kylo Ren.”

There’s a pause while he considers. “I told you,” he says, finally. “I don’t remember.”

“That’s a lie,” she huffs, dipping her hand in the pool and flicking water at him.

“Fine, I do remember, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the past.” He leans back, looking up at the canopy of trees above them.

“What if your family is waiting for you?” she asks. “Back in our world.”

It still twists his heart a little bit, the way she always refers to the mortal world as theirs, as if he belongs there, as if it’s his too. “I don’t think they are.”

“But you don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m bound here. I can’t go back.”

“But if you could.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” she asks, tilting her chin up in that challenging way he knows well by now.

“You know why.”

“But if not for the geas,” she insists. “If it were safe. Would you go back? And don’t tell me it doesn’t matter, because it does.”

He sighs. “Yes, I would. Not for… there’s nothing for me there, I’d just give anything to get away from here.”

“There is something for you there,” she says, trailing her fingers through the water, watching the ripples make their way to the other side. “I’d wait for you there.” He just watches her, lost for words, and eventually she ducks her head in embarrassment. “Would you at least tell me your name, then?” she asks.

“Of course not,” he scoffs. “Then you’d have power over me.”

She grins. “I already do have power over you.”

He can’t help but smile. “That you do.”

It takes him a few moments too long to realize she was talking about the blood oath.

 

“Where are we going?” Rey asks, trailing after Kylo through the castle. It’s been two weeks, and it seems like every day he has some new and lovely corner of the faery world to show her.

“You’ll see,” he says, half smug, and she smiles to herself. For all that their friendship was forged from the necessity of survival, she’s grown rapidly and genuinely fond of him. He’s different when he’s not the agent of the Gray King, softer. She’s drawn to the man he is in these moments, sharing every hard-won bit of beauty in this place with her, even though he’s halting and unsure, as if he hasn’t been himself in years and can’t quite remember how. Behind that, she can see the man he would have been if he’d never been taken, and there’s a part of her that aches for a world with him in it, whole and good and untouched by monsters.

“We’re here,” he says, standing in front of a set of double doors, and she can see him holding back a smile. “Close your eyes?”

She obliges, and when he takes her hands in his, she doesn’t fight the thrill in her stomach. The doors creak as he pushes them open, and wherever they are smells like old parchment and leather and dust. He leads her through it, and then he moves behind her and holds her shoulders. “Open your eyes,” he says, and when she does she can’t help her gasp.

“I didn’t know there were this many books in the whole  _ world _ ,” she says, drifting over to the shelf and running her fingers across them.

“This isn’t even a fraction of it,” he says, and pulls her to the front of the library. “I’ve been trying to organize it, ever since I found it, but there are so many.”

She reaches out and pulls one off the shelf. “ _ Apollonius of Tyre _ ,” she reads, carefully, from the first page. “I’ve never even heard of this.”

He tugs another book off a stack to the side. “Look, some aren’t even written in words,” he says, flipping through it to show her the rows and rows of enigmatic symbols, some of them almost like pictures.

“Where did all these come from?” she asks, clutching  _ Apollonius _ to her chest.

“Everywhere,” he replies, “places we don’t even know. The whole world.”

Rey runs her fingers over the shelf again. “This is amazing.”

“Wait- there’s one more thing.” He leads her to the back, behind a set of shelves, up a creaking staircase to a small gallery with one dusty window, that he opens to reveal the world stretching away from the castle. In the distance, Rey can see the same house on chicken-legs ambling through a field, and it makes her strangely homesick.

“Why are you showing me all this?” she asks, turning to look at Kylo.

He won’t meet her eyes, and there’s a trace of guilt to his expression. “I want you to be… as happy as you can be, here.”

She takes his hand in hers and leans up to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she says, soft and sincere. A ghost of a smile spreads across his face, and her heart trips.

 

The days fade into weeks, then months, and Kylo can see Rey start to settle into the faery world. She still sits in the Great Hall most nights, pretends to eat, avoids looking at him standing in the corner, and sneaks out whenever they bring in whatever grotesque entertainment they have for the night, escaping to another part of the castle with him. With every day he knows her more, cares for her more, and the weight of his secrets sits heavy on his heart. She speaks often of her home, her friends, her family. When she talks about the lost prince, it’s with the sort of awkward gravity of someone who knows they’re dealing with a tragedy, but doesn’t feel connected enough to it to be comfortable. He wonders what she’d say if she knew. He knows she never can.

Because, above all else, Rey is true and good and dedicated to the people she loves. If she knew he was their son, she’d fight tooth and nail to get him to come back with her, to give his parents their child back, and he knows he can’t go back, can’t even consider it, knows the danger it would put everyone around him in if he were to try. He’s valuable to Snoke still, and people would suffer if he left.

So he keeps his secret, and lets it weigh him down when she makes him feel too light, lets it remind him that he’s poaching this happiness, that it’s not his, he doesn’t deserve it for all the pain he’s caused.

But when she holds his hand, he feels more human than monster, and for a moment he doesn’t deny himself that feeling.

 

One day, in Rey’s third month in the castle, Kylo Ren hands her an iron dagger.

“Hide this under your dress,” he tells her. “Make sure you can get to it quickly. I’m leaving for a while, but I’ll be back soon. Stay away from the main parts of the castle.”

Two nights later, she stands atop a tower watching the great field, and just as dawn starts to creep over the sky, a black horse with a black-clad rider comes into view. She races through the castle and out the gates in time to catch him as he slumps and falls to the ground, covered in blood.

Rey slings one arm over her shoulder, dragging him towards the castle. “Help me,” she says, through gritted teeth. “You’re heavy.” His legs get under him, but barely, and she makes it to his chamber in the servants’ corridor. “What happened to you?” she asks, pulling his ever-weakening body through the door.

“They almost got the chariot before me, but I stopped them,” he slurs out while she struggles to get him into the bed. “Oh, and I’ve been poisoned.”

“With what?” she asks, panicked, searching his face for signs she knows- blue lips, sweating, swelling, hives. “What poison?”

“Hemlock,” he sighs, eyes fluttering shut. “I think.”

Rey presses her face into her hands, trying with all her might to remember her botany lessons. Kylo starts to thrash, and her mind races.

“Wormwood!” she finally exclaims, and leaps to her feet.

It takes her too long to get out of the castle, so she’s running desperately by the time she finally does. She knows it grows on fields and next to footpaths, so she starts running towards the wide, open field that stretches between the castle and the forest.

Rey doesn’t think her heart has ever pounded so hard as it does sprinting back to the castle. Her foot catches, and she stumbles, the herb flying out of her hand, but she’s back up and running before she even has time to notice the twinge in her ankle. She nearly loses her way through the castle in her panic, but she finds the door and drops down beside the bed, hands steady but mind wild as she prepares the treatment.

It’s only after his fit has calmed that she notices the blood staining the bed underneath him, and then her chest tightens all over again as her eyes light on the tear in his gambeson, the splintered shaft of an arrow sticking out. She takes a deep breath before she sets to work taking it all off him, till he’s lying on the bed in nothing but his chausses and braies, his skin smeared with blood as it flows from the arrow wound in his side, doubtless the source of the poisoning.

“I’m sorry,” she says to his unconscious form as she braces one hand against him, grabs the arrow’s shaft with the other, holds her breath, and  _ pulls _ . It comes out with an awful tear that makes her skin crawl, and he groans in his sleep. The wound bleeds even more freely now, and she has to scramble to remember what comes next. She’s at the hearth as soon as she does, grateful that it’s already set with wood and charcoal, and her hands fumble for the first time trying to strike the flint and tinder. “Steel is best,” she murmurs to herself, remembering her brief healing lessons. He keeps a steel rondel dagger on his belt, she knows, and it’ll just have to do. She pulls it out and sticks it in the fire till it glows red and bright, and then she hovers over him for a moment before taking one of his leather gloves and putting it in his mouth to bite on. “I’m really, really sorry,” she tells him, even though he can’t hear, before biting her lip and cauterizing the wound. His screams are bloodcurdling, and she’s glad she put the glove in his mouth to muffle them.

The wound sizzles, and she nearly gags from the stench of burning flesh, dropping the dagger onto the stone of the hearth as soon as she can. She sits back on her heels, face in her hands, and takes a deep, shaky breath.

He sleeps, restlessly, interrupted with fits and nightmares, for three days, Rey by his side the whole time. She remembers what he said about God, so long ago, but prays anyway, desperate and spiteful. On the fourth day, she startles awake to see his eyes half open, watching her languidly.

”How do you feel?” she asks, reaching out thoughtlessly to smooth his hair away from his sweaty, clammy face.

“Like hell,” he murmurs.

“What were you doing? How did you get poisoned?”

“Saving you,” he replies, still only halfway coherent. “They had the chariot, and they were about to bring it here and take you from me. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Her heart skips a beat, a familiar feeling by now. “You could have died,” she chides gently, the back of her hand tracing down the side of his face.

He hums softly, his eyes already drooping shut again. “Worth it,” he sighs, turning his head and brushing his lips against her hand before falling back asleep.

Rey leans down and presses her forehead against his chest, eyes closed. “Thank you,” she whispers.

 

When Kylo wakes next, it takes him a moment to realize where he is. There’s something warm resting on him, and as his eyes adjust to the dark he sees it’s Rey, half-draped over his body, her hands fisted tight in his shirt, and for a moment he can’t breathe for wanting to pull her into his arms.

“Wake up,” he says when he regains himself, shaking her softly. His throat feels like it’s been through a grindstone, and every muscle hurts, but he’s  _ alive _ , which is more than he expected for about half of his ride back to the castle.

He remembers the world starting to spin, and his vision getting black, and his hands shaking, and panic, because he’s been poisoned before, and he was so  _ close _ , he knew where the chariot was and it was just a matter of getting it back, of getting  _ her _ , and to fail now? When he could taste her freedom? It felt screamingly unjust.

But here he is, alive, and breathing, and watching her slowly blink herself awake, her grip on his shirt loosening as she takes in his face.

“You saved me,” he says, softly, unable to keep the wonder out of his voice.

“Of course I did,” she replies, husky with sleep in a way that makes the pain in his body disappear for a moment in favor of something hot and shivery. “You have a promise to keep.”

He smiles, his hand drifting to her hair. “I do.”

He’s bedridden for another two days, and on the third day, Rey finally asks the question he can tell has been on the tip of her tongue the entire time.

“So you have the Falcon?” she says, faking an air of aloofness.

“I almost did,” he replies. “But I got hurt before I could bring it back.”

“Oh,” she says, trying to hide the disappointment in which her tone is steeped.

“No- I know where it is, I can go back tomorrow and get it.”

“And no one else knows?” she asks, leaning forward and tangling her hand with his.

“No one.”

“Then you’ll wait until you’re healed.”

“But-” he starts to protest, but she cuts him off with a set jaw and fierce eyes.

“No. You almost  _ died _ , Kylo, you were wounded, and- and poisoned, and honestly it’s a goddamn miracle I even knew what to do, because I’m not a healer, and  _ you almost died _ .” Her voice rises in intensity as she goes on, her grip on his hand tightening, and the fear in her eyes hurts almost as much as the wound on his side.

“Rey,” he says, softly, reaching up and brushing his fingers through the hair fallen loose at her temple, cupping her face in his hand. “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m alive. You saved me.”

She leans into his touch, closing her eyes as if to savor it. “You’re not going back yet,” she insists again.

“I won’t, don’t worry. The Falcon will keep.” She reaches up to cover his hand with her own, sighing quietly.

“Wait,” she says, after a moment, pulling back. “I thought you were invulnerable.”

He looks away from her, mind racing for a lie, but he can’t come up with anything. “That geas- the condition was as long as my loyalty lay with the Gray King, no weapon shall harm me. When I swore to protect you, I broke the geas.”

She gapes at him. “That’s why you could even cut your hand,” she breathes, eyes wide. “You put your life on the line….”

“For you,” he finishes, softly, still not meeting her eyes. “Frankly, I’ve yet to encounter anything I wouldn’t do for you, Princess.”

He finally looks at her when she takes his face in her hands, but it’s only for a moment, because then she’s kissing him, and everything else spins away as his eyes fall shut and the entire universe narrows down to the feeling of her lips on his.

He’s the first to pull back, abruptly, turning away from her again. “No,” he says, “we can’t, I can’t, I’m- it’s too dangerous.”

She releases him as if burned. “I’m sorry, I thought- of course you don’t want-”

“No, no, I do want- I want everything with you,” he says, heart in his throat, reaching towards her, “but I don’t want you to be hurt because of me.”

“If I get hurt, it won’t be because of you,” she insists. “I'd rather kiss you once and die for it than live a thousand years never having had you.”

It’s enough, for him, for now, and he pulls her into another kiss, fierce and yearning and awestruck all at once.

 

It takes days for Rey to figure out how to talk to him about it, and she waits until what she thinks is the best possible moment, both of them curled up in the library gallery, his head in her lap, her fingers weaving through his hair while he reads to her from one of his favorite books.

“Tristan returns to the country of Gaul, to wait for his uncle-”

“Will you come back?” Rey interrupts, before hesitance can stop her. “With me, I mean. To our world.”

“You know I can’t,” he replies, putting the book down on his chest. “It would put people in danger.”

“We’ll protect you,” she insists, twisting a soft, midnight dark curl around her finger. “We protected Finn, we can protect you, too.”

“They won’t be willing-”

“Of course they will. They’d do anything for you.” She leans down close, whispers in his ear. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out, Ben?”

His body goes rigid, eyes wide, the book falling out of slack hands. “How-?”

“Twenty years gone,” she replies, pressing her forehead against his, eyes fixed on her fingers still tangled in his hair. “And you look just like your father. And here,” she traces her free hand over his upper arm, where his shirt hides a long, faded scar she’s ghosted kisses and caresses over countless times. “Poe gave this to you when you were seven, in the woods.”

“It was an accident,” he says, absent, his hand resting over hers, lost in memory. “But I still wouldn’t speak to him for two days.”

“You have to come back with me,” she says, pulling back to look him in the eyes. “They miss you.”

He turns away. “They don’t know me.”

She takes his chin, turns him back to face her, leans down and presses a sweet kiss to his lips. “I’ll miss you if you don’t.”

“But you could die if I do,” he says, reaching up to trace the line of her jaw.

“I could die anyway. Every day here I could die. Please,” she whispers, kissing him again. “Come home with me.”

“I’ll try,” he relents, and she knows that’s the best she’s going to get from him, so she leans in again, maneuvers herself down on top of him, hands wandering down to his shoulders, under his shirt, caught up in the strange feeling that this won’t last forever.


	6. Chapter Five: Eleventh Hour/Oh What a Fool

_ The forest flies by around them, her hand clutched in his. He runs as fast as he can, pulling her behind him, dodging around trees, but she stumbles, and in the moment he stops to help her, a sharp pain pierces him and- _

Kylo wakes with a strangled cry, soaked in sweat and breathing heavily. Rey is holding him by the shoulders, worried eyes searching his face. “You were tossing and turning like you’d been possessed,” she says, moving her hand to his cheek. “Are you alright?”

“It was a nightmare,” he says, pulling her into his arms and stroking her hair. “We were in danger.”

She presses a kiss to his bare chest. “Well, we’re safe here.”

He’s not sure whether he wants to laugh or cry. They’re the furthest thing from safe here. “Yes,” he says, anyway.  _ You are, at least _ .

He doesn’t sleep the rest of the night.

 

Kylo leaves the next morning, a kiss on Rey’s still-sleeping lips, and a promise to return soon whispered into the predawn dark. She stirs, murmuring softly, and he wants nothing more than to wrap himself around her and stay forever, here in this world where they are everything. But she deserves to go home, to be safe, and even though he knows the chances of him being there with her when she returns to his parents’ arms are nigh impossible, he knows he doesn’t have another choice, not really. The oath was just a formality, a finalization of what he already knows- he’ll do everything he can to get her home, because he couldn’t live with himself if she never does and it’s his fault.

So he turns, a scrap of parchment on the table telling her where he’s gone, and walks out the door, aware in a way he hopes is paranoia that this may have been the last night he’d spend with her.

His chest feels full with something he can’t name, something  _ good _ , as he pulls the chariot into the courtyard of the castle two days later. “Tell the King I have his prize,” he orders a passing servant, pulling off his helm and tucking it under his arm. He surveys the windows for a moment and catches Rey sitting in one of them, engrossed in something, and his heart leaps- they’re going  _ home _ .

As if he’d heard the thought, Snoke emerges from the doors, his long, ashen robe billowing out behind him in a perpetual artificial breeze, Hux and a gaggle of fae in tow. He appraises Kylo and the chariot with something like approval, but then a grin spreads across his marred face.

“Impressive, Ren. I had hoped you would be the one to bring it to me.” He turns, looking over his shoulder. “Hux,” he says, “the girl is yours now.”

The world drops out from under Kylo’s feet, punctuated by the clatter and ring of his helm falling from his hand, and he wishes his face was still hidden. “No,  _ I _ brought it, she’s-”

Snoke cuts him off with a barked laugh and a sneer. “You are  _ my _ champion, Ren, or did you forget that in your ridiculous affection for the mortal?” Snoke steps towards him, looming, and Kylo flinches despite himself. “What you win is  _ mine _ .” Faster than Kylo can react, Snoke’s hand lashes out, striking him across the face, and Kylo stumbles backwards. When he lifts his head, he can feel the burning pain of a slash running from his jaw to his forehead, the warm trickle of blood on his skin.

There’s a chorus of gasps, and a clatter as Hux’s goblet hits the flagstones. Kylo feels shame and terror race through him; his geas is common knowledge, and now-

“Exposed,” Snoke says, arch and smug, “for the traitor you are.”

Kylo steps away from Snoke, shaky, then turns and runs, only to be caught, frozen by magic where he stands and grabbed by the nearest guards. He spots Rey in her window, watching with horror on her face, and he wants to scream at her to run, but then he sees a hand come up over her mouth and yank her away, and all he can do is cry out in anguish as he’s dragged, struggling, into the castle.

 

Rey bites the hand that grabs her, kicking and thrashing in the faerie’s grip, but they’re far stronger than she and all her efforts prove futile. She’s carried down seemingly endless stairs, through the castle and into its sublevels, and as her attempts to escape dwindle, she instead pays attention to the path they take- twists and turns, guard posts and locked doors.

It may have been ten years since she was a hungry, hardscrabble orphan, but some things, once learned, never go away. Her captor throws her bodily into a cell, and she rolls when she hits the ground, coming to a stop in time to look up and see him slam the door shut, flipping a latch and padlocking it. She settles onto her knees, taking deep breaths and letting her eyes adjust to the gloom as he leaves. Once his footsteps fade, she gives herself another count of fifty before she moves, pulling a fastening pin out of her dress and twisting the lock around so she can reach it.

It’s not the first time she’s broken out of prison, after all.

 

Kylo hits the back wall of his cell with a thud, his head cracking against the stone, but he’s on his feet almost immediately, slamming into the bars of the door a breath of a second after the latch is closed. He reaches through the iron bars, lightning-quick, and grabs a faerie by the throat, yanking him back against the metal and glaring at the other faeries, teeth bared in a snarl, ears ringing with the agonized screams of the faerie as the bars burn his skin. Other faeries watch, slack-mouthed and wide-eyed, as the one he holds gradually goes limp in his grasp. When Kylo opens his hand, he drops to the floor, his charred flesh smoking.

“Let me  _ go _ ,” Kylo growls, gripping the bars so tight he could almost bend them.

The two others snort, then pick their compatriot up, carrying him out of the room to the sound of Kylo rattling his cell door and shouting profanities after them.

“Oh, stop it, you  _ child _ ,” says Hux, wandering into the room with the deepest exasperation on his face. “You disobeyed the king, you’re a traitor, accept it.”

Kylo spits in his face.

“Is the damn mortal really worth all this?” Hux sighs, wiping his face with a flick of his fingers.

“She’s worth more than you could ever understand, you disgusting soulless-”

Hux scoffs, cutting him off. “You’re pathetic. She’s mine, now, anyway, so I suggest you-”

Kylo’s hand darts out between the bars, but Hux steps back quickly enough that Kylo can’t grab him. “She is  _ not yours _ !” he roars, rattling the bars.

Hux sighs. “It’s a shame you’re going to die. I did enjoy having you around.”

Even after he’s left, Kylo’s voice still echoes down the stone corridor, cursing him.

 

Rey creeps through the dungeon with the practiced expertise of someone whose life of crime may be gone, but is not at all forgotten. Her blood sings with rage, all terror replaced by fury and the adrenaline of desperate survival. The iron dagger Kylo had given her all that time ago is gripped tightly in her hand, for the first time out of its sheath under all her skirts.

She comes across a guard, standing stone-still and staring blankly at the wall ahead of him. Now more than ever she steps slowly, carefully as she comes up behind him, then, faster than he can cry out, her hand flashes out to cover his mouth as she draws the dagger across his throat. She’s not an experienced killer, but as with so many other things, she learned this in the thin days of her youth, the motion of cutting a neck wide open so the only sound they can make is a choked gurgle as they drown in their own blood.

Rey tilts her ear to the air, listening for the sound of Ben shouting in his own cell, faint when she started but growing ever stronger, and follows it. She thinks she’s only a few rooms away when it stops, abruptly, and her stomach churns, so she hurries, wary of her louder footsteps but desperate to see him.

As soon as she turns the corner, she finds his shape in the darkness, slumped against the wall, head on his knees, stripped of his weapons and armor, but alive, and she sighs in relief. He looks up at the sound of her picking the padlock, and then he’s up against the bars before she can blink.

“How did you get out?” he asks, watching rapt as she twists her pin one last time and the lock clicks open.

“Never was a fan of being locked up,” she says idly, swinging the door open. He’s on her immediately, his hands touching every part of her they can reach, cataloguing her body as if he’s not sure she’s really there. “Your face,” she says quietly, reaching up towards him. She’d seen the Gray King hit him, seen the flash of red on his face, but she had no idea it was this bad. It’s still bleeding, lightly, red oozing from the deepest parts and trickling down his features.

“You can mourn my looks later,” he says, turning his head away from her.

“You’re right, we have to go.”

Darkness has fallen when they make it out of the castle walls, and Rey can only hope her rose-colored dress doesn’t give them away as they run through the field, towards the forest that will lead them out of the faerie world, hearts pounding in tandem terror.

 

The trees loom above them and Kylo stares, grim-faced and resolute, at the eastern sky for the first hint of dawn.

“There,” he says, as the softest breath of gray light spills over the horizon, and pulls Rey into the forest after him.

“Do you think they’re after us?” Rey asks, taking in the light trill of the earliest songbirds waking.

“I hope not.” All Kylo can think about is Hux’s fondness for hunting, but the sounds of nature coming alive around them do a little to assuage his fear. As long as the birds are singing, they’re not in danger. “At any rate, the further we go, the harder it’ll be for them to find us.”

They walk in silence for another few minutes before Rey speaks again. “They’re going to knight you, when we get home. First thing.”

Kylo snorts. “They knight people who cut off their warriors’ hands and kidnap their daughter?”

“They knight people who save their daughter’s life.”

“It wouldn’t need saving if I hadn’t put you in danger,” he replies softly.

“You can’t change the past.”

“No, my magic isn’t nearly powerful enough for that,” he says, wry and bitter.

“Stop,” she tells him, and he ducks his head.

“I’m sorry-”

“No, Ben,  _ stop _ .” Rey pulls him to a halt and points up at the canopy. “Listen.”

He frowns. “I don’t hear anything.”

She meets his eyes, her expression grave. “Exactly.”

As if on cue, a distant sound echoes towards them through the trees. “Is that-?”

“Hunting dogs.”

Kylo holds her hand tightly in his and starts  _ running _ .

 

To Rey, fear is a close sibling, a friendly neighbor, a constant companion. Fear as a child of starvation, punishment, the hundreds of awful things that could happen to a tiny girl alone on the streets. Fear, as she grew, of failing, of disappointing the people who had been so kind to her, of being turned back out onto the street. Rey has always worn fear close to her heart, but this is like nothing else. Hunger, prison, rejection- those are nebulous but familiar things.

The hunting dogs of a malevolent, otherworldly prince are bogeymen, and she feels the fear now of every ill-behaved child when things go bump in the night, raw and intense and unconquerable.

“Ben, please,” she pants, “I can’t keep going, I need to rest.”

They’ve been running for what feels like, but can’t possibly be, hours. The canopy of the trees obscures the sky, so they can’t discern the path of the sun, and the green-tinted light raining down is dim and constant, so time might as well not be passing. Rey would swear the dogs sound closer every minute, but they haven’t been caught yet. She almost wishes they would, just so the terror of the chase would be over.

“This way,” Ben says, pulling her down another path.

The cave he brings her to is damp and small, barely enough room between the two of them to breathe, a fact for which she is almost grateful because the air stinks horribly of mold and brimstone.

“We’ll be safe here for a while,” Ben says, dropping his head onto her shoulder. “But we have to keep moving eventually.”

“Will they follow us back into our world?” she asks. “Will they even be able to?”

“I hope not,” he says. “But we can cross that bridge later- right now we need to survive three days and three nights.”

The silence wraps around them, suffocating. Rey sighs, the distant barking of the dogs sitting in the back of her mind. She’s not sure if she’s really hearing it or just paranoid, but the anxiety wants to make her scream, so she closes her eyes and focuses on the sound of Ben breathing next to her.

“When we survive tonight,” she says, more to herself than anything, running her fingers through his hair, “the dogs will be far away in the morning.”

“You don’t know that,” Ben protests, face pressed into her neck, voice wavering.

“Let me have this,” she whispers. “Please.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Yes.”

“When we survive the forest,” she continues, “we’ll go home.”

“When we make it home,” Ben joins in, “they’ll knight me.”

It’s not quite how the game is played, but she smiles anyway. “When they knight you, you’ll be crown prince again.”

“When I’m crown prince, I’ll marry you.”

“When you marry me, your mother will cry.”

“My mother’s never cried in her life.”

“Fine, your father will, but it will be for me.”

Ben laughs, lifting his head from her shoulder to look at her. She can’t quite make out his features in the dark, but she can see the cut running across his face. “You will marry me, right?” he asks.

“Aren’t you supposed to ask the king?” she teases.

“I’m asking you.”

“When we make it home,” she promises. “Yes.”

“Then we’d better make it home.”

 

The dogs aren’t barking in the morning when they set out, and Rey could cry from relief.

Around noon, the barking starts again, closer than it was yesterday, and by the time they find another hiding place to spend the night, Rey isn’t sure she can ever run another step.

They don’t play the when-we-survive game that night- it would be too grim, too arrogant to tempt fate like that.

“If we just stay here,” she asks Ben, “will they find us?”

“Maybe not, but we won’t escape the forest. We have to keep moving. You’re not meant to linger here, it’s… unnatural.”

“Why, what happens?”

“Anyone who stays too long in the forest is doomed to wander it for eternity, lost forever, never quite dying but not alive either.”

“We’d better escape then, hadn’t we?”

Their cover that night is equally cramped, long and low-ceilinged, and they lay pressed together all night, trading slow kisses and fighting sleep, desperate to pretend they have time, exhausted but unwilling to lose a second of what could be their final hours together.

In the morning, the birds aren’t singing.

 

Kylo is certain, in the most knowing part of his bones, that they are walking the thinnest part of the line of fate, and when they hear the dogs begin barking that day, closer than ever, he feels it snap underneath him with the nearness of them. Rey would want him to hope, desperately, to the bitter end, especially when they’re so close to escaping, but he is at heart not given to hope or fancy, and the future as it is laid out in front of him is uncertain at best.

_ When we survive this _ , he says to himself, over and over, following it with anything he can think of. He’ll teach everyone in his kingdom to read. He’ll kiss Rey a thousand times. He’ll take in every orphan he sees.

He’s not sure who he’s praying to, but he hopes it’s getting somewhere.

Kylo could have sworn Hux and his dogs were behind him, but they come around a bend in the path, and there they are, a pack of red-eyed, snarling hounds, all sharp teeth and raven-black fur, milling around a tall, silver-gray charger, faerie prince seated astride with all manner of weapons. He’s frozen long enough to see the slow smile spread across Hux’s face, and then he turns on his heel and starts running.

The forest flies by around them, her hand clutched in his. He flies across the ground as fast as his feet can carry him, pulling her behind him, dodging around trees, his heartbeat in his ears the only thing louder than the dogs practically snapping at their heels, but she stumbles, and in the moment he stops to help her, a sharp pain pierces him and-


	7. Chapter Six: Hereafter/Wander for Eternity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it all the way with me, y'all! It's been an adventure

“How do you want to die?” Ben had asked Poe once, long ago, sprawled out in the sunny courtyard.

“In my sleep, a hundred years old, surrounded by fat grandchildren,” Poe answered, without hesitation. He was ten years old then, wise and worldly and authoritative, but Ben made a face anyway.

“I’d rather die in battle,” Ben had announced, with all the lofty conviction of a child still preoccupied with delusions of grandeur. “With glory, and everything, take down a hundred enemies with a sword sticking out of me. I want them to write songs about me.”

Poe frowned. “Sir Luke says there’s no glory in battle. He says he’s seen some of the bravest men he knew weep for their mothers as they died.”

“Then they weren’t brave.”

“Still,” Poe had said, stretching his arms above his head. “Better to die peacefully after a long life when you can say goodbye.”

“Nobody writes songs about men who die in their sleep.”

“Nobody writes tragedies about men who die in their sleep, you mean.”

In the forest, Poe’s words echo in his head as his breath leaves him, and then he looks down. The second he sees the arrowhead sticking out of his chest, Kylo’s decision is made for him. He snaps the shaft off in front and in back, and turns to face the hunters.

“Keep going,” he tells Rey, eyes fixed on the three faerie hunters, gripping the broken shaft with the iron arrowhead on it tightly in his hand. “Don’t look back.” And then he charges.

 

There’s a difference between the Kylo Ren who dueled Poe all that time ago and the Ben who fights now. Any pretense of control, of restraint, is gone, replaced instead by a desperate sort of savagery, the wildness of a last stand. He uses magic and force in equal measure, snapping the neck of a dog that leaps at him and snatching a knife from Hux’s boot as he dives under his horse to cut its legs out from under it all in the space of a minute. He rolls to his feet as Hux is sent careening to the ground, and almost manages to attack the next dog running at him before he’s lifted off his feet by an invisible hand, flying through the air and slamming into a tree some distance away.

He falls to the ground, limp and unmoving, and Rey realizes only belatedly that the nigh-inhuman scream that pierces the air is her own. She falls by his side, pulling him into her lap, brushing his hair from his face, searching for any sign of life.

He coughs weakly, and she almost wants to laugh for relief, except blood is dripping out of his mouth, now, too, and his eyes are distant and unfocused, his breath whistling and bubbling unnaturally.

“Please, Rey,” he manages to choke out. “You need to run.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she insists, hating the way her voice wavers with tears beginning to slip down her face.

“Dawn.” His voice is so weak, and his lips are turning blue underneath the wet blood spread across them like paint. “Get out by dawn.”

“I will,” she promises. “I will.”

“Tell my-” he coughs again, and his face is almost a mask of blood now, his graying skin showing through in patches. “Tell my mother I’m sorry.”

Rey just presses her forehead against his, eyes closed tightly. “I love you.” Her voice cracks on a sob. “I love you.”

A weak, rattling sigh escapes him, and then silence.

The only sound in the forest for a moment is Rey weeping, her arms tight around Ben’s limp body, and then the soft rustle of boots on the undergrowth. Rey hears Hux spit the second before she feels something cold and wet on the back of her neck, and her shoulders tense.

“Pathetic,” he sneers, and then a twig snaps as he turns to walk away.

Rage fills her, overwhelms her, replaces all that she is. The world fades to a scarlet blur, moving in slow motion as she pulls the iron knife out, on her feet and flying towards Hux. Sound is distant and echoing, her heartbeat in her ears eclipsing it all, and a strange sense of calm washes over her as she moves.

Her knife sinks into Hux’s back once, twice, three times, over and over, she loses count. By the time her senses return to her, she’s soaked in his blood, stabbing and stabbing, her throat raw with screaming. She isn’t sure when he stopped moving, but he hasn’t been for a while. She feels inhuman.

The knife hits the forest floor with a soft thud as she rocks back onto her heels, clenching her fists in the red-stained fabric of her skirt. She can hear the faint whisper of presence in the trees around her, curious forest spirits watching her as she struggles to her feet, pausing next to Ben.

“You can take him,” she tells the forest, vicious, gesturing behind her at Hux’s bleeding corpse. There’s a sigh like a soft breeze, and if she cared to look back, she’d see only a slight disturbance of underbrush and an iron knife lying on the ground.

Rey lies next to his body, resting her head on his still chest and twining her fingers with his. The forest grows dim around her, rays of sunset peering through the trees at the two of them. But for the intangible murmur of something otherworldly, just on the edge of awareness, the forest is silent around them.

Rey doesn’t recall falling asleep, but when she wakes, soft morning light surrounds her.

She doesn’t want to move at first, resistant to the instinct in the back of her mind telling her something is _wrong_ , and then she remembers-

Dawn.

It’s past the third dawn.

Rey scrambles to her feet, glancing around desperately for a path. The wind blows gently, rustling leaves away from a faint deer trail. She glances down at Ben, still and serene as sleep, and whispers, “I’m sorry,” before stumbling, hurrying, running down the trail.

There’s a part of her, as she crashes through the underbrush, that has already given up. There was too much light when she woke, she missed her chance. But she tries anyway, running until she can’t anymore, and then walking until the orange-scarlet glow of evening sends her to her knees, her face pressed into her hands, her hollow heart echoing with equal parts grief and slow-moving panic.

Morning again sees her rising, walking, hungry and tired but unrelenting. She is, above all, resolute, even though she can hardly remember why anymore.

“When I survive this,” she tells the stars that watch her through cracks in the canopy, lifetimes away, “I’ll see him again.”

It is, perhaps, the most fanciful wish of all, but at the same time the most earnest.

The next day, she carries on. And the next, and the next, until she feels more like a wraith than a woman, shaking with cold and barely able to put one foot in front of the other, but still, somehow, persisting.

She’s lost track of the days by the time she stumbles and falls and fails, for the first time, to stand again. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, to herself, to the world, to no one at all. “I tried.”

At first, the figure standing before her doesn’t register. Her mind is so exhausted she can barely remember her own name, much less recognize the fuzzy shape her eyes are struggling to focus on. And then she makes out his face, and her heart picks up, and somewhere within her she finds the resolve to move, raise herself on trembling arms.

“Ben?” she breathes, blinking rapidly, begging her eyes to tell her the truth.

He holds out his hand, smiling at her, hale and beautiful and beloved. “I missed you.”

The strength to stand is easier, and then it’s one step, two, and she’s running, flying into his arms.

 

 

Ils étaient tous deux  
comme le chèvrefeuille  
qui s'enroule autour du noisetier:  
quand il s'y est enlacé  
et qu'il entoure la tige,  
ils peuvent ainsi continuer à vivre longtemps.  
Mais si l'on veut ensuite les séparer,  
le noisetier a tôt fait de mourir,  
tout comme le chèvrefeuille. 

For those two, it's just like with   
The sweet honeysuckle vine   
That on the hazel tree will twine:   
When it fastens, slips itself right   
Around the trunk, ties itself tight,   
Then the two survive together.   
But should anyone try to sever   
Them, the hazel dies right away,  
And the honeysuckle, the same day.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


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